Obama Administration Looking To Divert Billions in Sandy Funds Away From New Jersey and New York

By Art Gallagher, artvg@aol.com

The Obama Administration is considering holding a contest for areas impacted by disasters other than Superstorm Sandy.  The “winners” would get between $1 billion and $2 billion of the remaining $3.6 billion is Sandy relief dollars being doled out by the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), according to a story first reported by the Wall Street Journal

The Record reports that New Jersey Congressmen Bill Pascrell Jr., D-Paterson; Albio Sires, D-West New York; and Frank Pallone, D-Long Branch, and Sen. Bob Menendez are urging HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan not to divert federal aid to projects in other parts of the country.  Members of the New York Congressional Delegation are making similar pleas.

Bookerism of the Day

Where’s Senator Cory Booker?  He’s proselytizing on twitter. 

Sires told The Record that the entire New Jersey delegation could join together in opposition to a nationwide contest for the money.  That would be great!  Sires should lead the Democrats in the delegation in ending the partisanship that has been dominating the discourse over Sandy recovery and sign the letter to Donovan and Michael Boots, the Acting Chair of the White House Council on Environmental Quality that Congressman Chris Smith invited him, and all members of the delegation to sign requesting a meeting to hash out the multitude of issues New Jersey residents are having with the HUD relief process.

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$25K raised in 20 hours for family of boy killed in Keansburg

$25K raised in 20 hours for family of boy killed in Keansburg (via NJ.com)

KEANSBURG – More than $25,000 has been raised in less than 24 hours to help pay for funeral arrangements and medical bills for a boy who was struck and killed by a car on Tuesday night. At around 4 p.m. on Tuesday, 11-year-old Drew Keough was a pedestrian…

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Beach Replenishment Project Completed In Belmar

Resident Engineer Paul Jalowski with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, New York District, discusses how the elevation of a wide beach berm reduces coastal risks to communities behind them at the site of the Belmar to Manasquan beach renourishment project with U.S. Representative Chris Smith and local officials in Manasquan, N.J. Nov 7, 2013

Congressman Chris Smith announced this afternoon that the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers has completed a $25 million Southern Monmouth County beach replenishment project in Belmar.  The five mile stretch of beach including Manasquan, Spring Lake, Sea Girt and Belmar was severely eroded by Superstorm Sandy.  The project, which started in November 7, 2013 nourished the beaches to better conditions than existed pre-Sandy.

“I stood on what was left of the beaches in the days after Superstorm Sandy and the immense scope of the damage was a hard to take in,” said Smith, who worked to obtain Sandy recovery funding and hosted a groundbreaking in Manasquan Nov. 7. “The beaches and dunes which offered protection to the shore communities were washed away—leaving the towns vulnerable to future storms. Thankfully, the Army Corps of Engineers has now rebuilt the beaches in Belmar, Sea Girt, Spring Lake and Manasquan to continue the protections they provide for homes and lives.”

The project is funded 100 percent by the federal government through the Army Corps’ Flood Control and Coastal Emergencies (FCCE) account. The project pumped an estimated 1.3 million cubic yards of sand onto the shoreline.

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Middletown Calls On Christie, Legislature To Allow Affordable Housing Funds To Assist Sandy Impacted Homeowners

Citing the shortage of federal and state funds available to assist Superstorm Sandy impacted homeowners in rebuilding their homes, the Middletown Township Committtee this week joined Marlboro Mayor Jonathan Hornik and Assemblyman Declan O’Scanlon in calling on the state legislature and Governor Chris Christie to put the more than $100 million in Affordable Housing Funds that are sitting dormant to work.

With a unanimous 5-0 vote, the committee passed a resolution on Monday, April 21, calling for legislation that would reinstate Regional Contribution Agreements (RCAs) “for the limited purpose of getting victims of Superstorm Sandy back in their homes during this time of need.”

RCAs were created in the original 1985 Fair Housing Act whereby towns with funds raised from developer fees or through bonding could transfer up to half of those funds to another community for the purpose of building affordable housing as required by the New Jersey Supreme Court’s Mt. Laurel decision.

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Stronger than the storm?

New Jersey’s economy should be booming with reconstruction. It isn’t.

There should be hundreds of construction workers in Highlands, Union Beach, Sea Bright and other Sandy impacted communities every day.  They are not working and don’t look to be anytime soon.

Short changed by insurance companies/the National Flood Insurance Plan. Arduous applications for aid followed by red tape, bureaucratic incompetence and rules that halt rebuilding.  Expensive and time consuming zoning approvals to rebuild what was there before.  Pleas for help are answered with finger pointing between bureaucrats at different levels of government who are getting paid for their bullshit and going home every night.

“GO, GO, GO, REBUILD, you’ll get reimbursed,” we were told after the storm. We trusted our government. They lied.

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Christie spends $100 million on cancer research, proposes to spend $18 million more in coming year

Photo by Paul Scharff

Throughout the relative austerity of  the last five state budgets, Governor Chris Christie somehow managed to spend $100 million in cancer research through Rutgers Cancer Institute.  In his current proposed budget for fiscal year 2015 (July 1, 2014-June 30, 2015), Christie has proposed funding the program at the same level it was funded in fiscal years 2010, 2011, 2012 and 2013, $18 million.

Christie proposed spending $18 million in the FY 2014 budget too. In negotiations with the legislature the amount was raised to $28 million for the current year.

Now Rutgers Cancer Institute and their friends at The Star Ledger are spinning the new $18 million proposed for the coming year as a cut of $10 million.

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Pallone has less than $1 million in campaign cash

Plainfield Today photo

Congressman Frank Pallone’s (NJ-6, Monmouth and Middlesex) once formidable campaign war chest of roughly $4 million is down to less than $1 million according his latest report to the Federal Election Commission.

New Jersey’s senior Democratic congressman, Pallone spent $3,778,155 in the Special U.S. Senate Primary last summer in his bid to replace the late Senator Frank Lautenberg. He lost that primary to then Newark Mayor Cory Booker.

Pallone reported $938,472 cash on hand in his congressional campaign account as of March 31, 2014.  He raised $200,449.64 in the first quarter of this year and disbursed #338,450.67.  $60, 645 remains in his senate campaign account.

The $938,472 that Pallone reports on hand may be inflated by illegal contributions. A cursory examination of his most recent quarterly report reveals $14,200 in contributions from individuals during the current election cycle that exceed the legal limit of $2600 per election.

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Highlands Restaurant Gets $50K Stronger NJ Grant

Havana Tropical Café, a Cuban Restaurant which was destroyed by Superstorm Sandy, was awarded a $50,000 Stronger NJ Business Grant by the Christie Administration this week, according to a release by the NJ Economic Development Authority.

The Stronger NJ Business Grant program is funded through New Jersey’s Community Development Block Grant Disaster Recovery (CDBG-DR) allocation from the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).  Similar to other Sandy relief grant programs, there are strict federal eligibility requirements to which the EDA and applicants must comply. To date, 374 grants have been approved totaling $18.1 million. An additional $24 million in loans have been approved by EDA through the program. This includes 11 grants in Highlands and 60 in all of Monmouth County.

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NJ Sandy planning moves forward on local level; experts say regional approach needed

NJ Sandy planning moves forward on local level; experts say regional approach needed (via NJ.com)

While trudging through the ongoing rebuilding from Hurricane Sandy, coastal communities pounded by the devastating storm are trying to form long-term strategies for addressing a wide-range of recovery needs with a finite amount of money. At the same…

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Bookerism of the day

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